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Network Operator pays Company X, and Company X pays Ringtone Provider
Network Operator pay Company X, and Company X pay Ringtone Provider

Which one is correct?

Mari-Lou A
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user63272
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    Voting to close. This is a question about whether organisations should be treated as singular or plural. Already discussed on this forum many times before (http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/collective-nouns+grammatical-number), and you can find good answers in standard reference books on English usage. – Pitarou Jan 24 '14 at 07:46

1 Answers1

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The network operator acts as a single entity and is therefore considered in the singular, i.e. "Network Operator pays...".

Newb
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  • References? Why should we believe you? – Pitarou Jan 24 '14 at 08:33
  • References to what, exactly? All of this is obvious. – Newb Jan 24 '14 at 08:42
  • Reference to a corpus of the English language? Or a usage guide? Or just link to answers given previously (see the links in the comments to this question.) – Pitarou Jan 24 '14 at 09:06
  • It might be obvious in American English, but in British English, it is just as obviously wrong. – RegDwigнt Jan 24 '14 at 13:00
  • @RegDwigнt Oh no, don't go and spoil the surprise. I wanted Newb to find that out for himself. But since you've let the cat out of the bag, I'll expand on your answer: In British English, either the singular or plural are fine. In America, some stylists maintain that only the singular is acceptable, but this is a matter for debate. However, in this context, the singular is clearly more appropriate because the organisations are being treated as parties to a financial transaction. So Newb was right, but perhaps not for the right reasons. – Pitarou Jan 25 '14 at 03:20
  • @Pitarou Whether you subscribe to British or American English is almost totally irrelevant: as you said, the context makes it blatantly clear that the singular is the appropriate choice. Moreover, if you had a particular issue with my answer, it would've been more productive to post your concern outright rather than to play coy and ask for references, which is a waste of time for everyone involved. (Keep in mind that core to the mission of SE is providing high-quality, correct answers.) – Newb Jan 25 '14 at 04:24
  • @Newb Correct? Yes. High quality? No. "It's obvious" is not very useful to the person asking the question. – Pitarou Jan 25 '14 at 05:10